Hearts Divided (Cedar Cove #5.5)(63)

Finding contentment, finding peace, might very well be impossible. Even in the only town he’d ever wanted to live in.

He’d chalked it up to morbid curiosity when he’d driven by the house on Center Street. He remembered it as dilapidated and menacing—where the danger to a seven-year-old boy was far greater than freezing to death on a winter night. The real peril had been to his heart and soul.

The house, with its For Rent sign, had remained an eyesore, a blemish in a neighborhood of charming homes. But it looked sad, not menacing, in need of care. The current owners, who lived in Medford, were waiting for the Sarah’s Orchard housing market to appreciate enough that even their run-down property would sell. Their new tenant was welcome to make improvements, if he liked, at his own expense, assuming the structure wasn’t devalued as a result.

It wasn’t, and Nick’s neighbors were thrilled. By the time he began knocking on doors—for that was how introductions were made in Sarah’s Orchard—they’d spread the word that the new handyman in town was handy indeed.

Nick’s reconciliation with his Center Street memories helped his quest for peace. As did seeing the orchards again, one orchard in particular.

But it wasn’t enough. He needed to see the MacKenzies again. The kind eyes. He wouldn’t introduce himself as “the boy who’d saved Elizabeth,” of course. Much less as “Elizabeth’s hero.”

“Hero” had been as foreign to him on that long-ago December night as “son” had been. He’d clung to “son,” treasured it, but even at age seven he’d believed “hero” was wrong. He’d only done what anyone would’ve done had they spotted the sobbing little girl.

He’d been called a hero many times in the intervening years. It continued to sound wrong. In combat as in life, he only did what he believed anyone would do.

Nick had intended to tell Charles and Clara the same thing he’d told the other townspeople who’d opened their doors to him. He was willing and able to do a range of repairs.

The orchard was in blossom on the April evening the soldier with splintered bones climbed the steep drive the small boy had ascended, carrying a giggling toddler, so many Decembers past.

In blossom, and magical. Those trees, he felt, wanted him to sing to them, the way he sang “Amazing Grace,” when that was what the wounded needed to hear. Or “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Or “God Bless America.” Or any song that would make an injured soldier smile.

It was Clara who’d opened the door to his knock. Nick had been only a sentence into his introduction when she’d tilted her head and widened her eyes.

“You’re him, aren’t you?”

“Him?”

“Our boy. Elizabeth’s hero. Don’t deny it. I know you are. Charles! Guess who’s here? At last.”

Nick hadn’t denied it. Nor, by the time Charles appeared, had he confirmed it. He’d been speechless in those moments, stunned that Clara had known.

The man he’d become bore no resemblance to the scrawny boy he’d been. True, Clara had promised she’d never forget his bright blue eyes.

But he didn’t have bright blue eyes, not as a boy—and most certainly not as a man. Oh, there was a tincture of blue in the gray, a patch of sky amid the clouds. But in all his years, only Clara MacKenzie had remarked on it.

What she’d seen had been an illusion, the play of red Christmas lights on the hint of blue. Or maybe the entire illusion had been in the sparkling eyes of the beholder.

Others had made comments about Nick’s eyes. Other women. Bedroom eyes, some concluded. Only wilder. As if a bed was too tame for his tastes. And that was before he went to war.

No, Nick didn’t have bright blue eyes. Never had. And the hair that had been blondish when Clara had last seen him had turned brown when he reached his teens.

But Clara had known who he was.

Because of his expression, she’d eventually informed him. It was identical, she said, to the hopeful way he’d looked when she and Charles had promised to be there for him—always. Hopeful yet skeptical, she’d added. Hope against hope.

Charles and Clara MacKenzie had kept their promise, welcoming him into their lives when he’d needed them most. Charles and Clara had needed Nick, too. Both of them. And, in the seven months since Charles’s death, and to the extent she’d permit it, he’d shared with Clara her enormous loss.

Beginning tomorrow, he’d be with Clara all summer.

He’d find a way to help her, and the lovely eyes that had once seen colors and emotions no one else could see.

Three

“Oh, Clara,” he said when she opened the door and he saw her tears.

“You miss him, too.”

“I do,” Nick said. “All day, every day. Charles was the finest man I’ve ever known.”

Clara nodded and wiped her eyes. “Are you dropping by for dinner?”

“Just dropping by.” Nick smiled. “But I wouldn’t turn down food.”

“Then come on in.”

They’d both known she’d ask, and that he’d accept the offer. He’d shown up often—at suppertime—since Charles’s death. And at dawn, when her curtains signaled she’d awakened for the day. And midmorning for coffee, and in the afternoon for tea.